Oil spills may happen and cause significant problems for many people. Oil spills have negative impacts on the people that live near the affected areas. The oil spills often lead to contamination of the water, thus, killing the marine and affecting the fishermen in the process. Fishers rely on the water for their fishing activities and economic gain, and with an oil spill, their work may be affected for an extended period. With the contamination of water, activities such as fishing in the polluted water are halted, thus affecting the fishermen and the fisheries, especially if large amounts of oil were spilled. The oil spills directly affect fishers, as they contaminate the fish species swimming in the oil-contaminated waters (Wiens, 2015). Additionally, Virginia fisherman may lose their jobs for prolonged periods owed to government limits on fishing. The clean-up may take a long time depending on the amount and the area affected, thus leading to huge amount of losses on the fishermen’s side. The fishing bans result to economic drops in the living areas, thus affecting the residents and the Virginia fishermen (Garza-Gil et al., 2006). The fishermen may also be affected psychologically and socially, as they will have no work at the time. With the reduction of blue crabs in the bay, oil spills would reduce the crabs further making recovery extremely challenging. This would also result in a reduction to the crab business. Cleaning up oil spills is hectic and may affect people’s and sea life significantly. Therefore, in addressing the situation, the cleanup exercise should be fast to avoid further spread of the oil into the waters. The clean-up exercise should be well coordinated to ensure that the process does not stay for extended periods (Sarbatly, Krishnaiah, & Kamin, 2016). Lack of good coordination may result to further damage as the oil spill may spread. Considering the health of the people and the marine, the affected places should be closed until they are completely cleaned to avoid contaminating the people with oil residues (Salerno & McCoy, 2010). Oil in seafood may be hazardous to people’s health. The pollution rate due to oils spills is dangerous for everybody in the environment. Therefore, it is recommended that the people drilling oil make sure they observe international standards to avoid polluting marine through oil spills accidents. International standard harmonize the standards ( Bostrom et.al, 2015). Facilitation of oil spills prevention and research can help the authorities come up with regulators that would reduce oil spills accidents. If oil spills continue to happen regularly, marine life may be completely destroyed. The Chesapeake Bay can also ensure risk assessment in the area, to determine and identify the elements that pose a risk to the bay. The risk assessment will help in reducing the risk of an oil spill occurrence. The fishing gears can also be assessed to determine the risk they pose to the marine life. Ensure that appropriate infrastructure is put in place at the bay. The safe and appropriate infrastructure development will guarantee prevention of oil spill accidents. The current infrastructure should also be checked and repaired to guarantee safety in the waters. Safety laws are given for a reason so no company should compromise them for profits at the expense of sustainability. Safety in a corporation should be cultivated from within. Forecasting and monitoring of the waters and the activities in the waters would help improve the detection of threats that would cause an oil spill ( Bostrom et.al, 2015). The authorities should make sure companies take action in ensuring the prevention of oil spills, rather than wait for the companies to do so.
References
Garza-Gil, M. D., Prada-Blanco, A., & Vázquez-Rodríguez, M. X. (2006). Estimating the short-term economic damages from the Prestige oil spill in the Galician fisheries and tourism. Ecological Economics , 58 (4), 842-849.
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Salerno, J. A., & McCoy, M. A. (Eds.). (2010). Assessing the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on human health: A summary of the June 2010 workshop . National Academies Press.
Sarbatly, R., Krishnaiah, D., & Kamin, Z. (2016). A review of polymer nanofibres by electro spinning and their application in oil–water separation for cleaning up marine oil spills. Marine pollution bulletin , 106 (1), 8-16.
Wiens, J. A. (2015). Review of an ecosystem services approach to assessing the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Bostrom, A., Joslyn, S., Pavia, R., Walker, A. H., Starbird, K., & Leschine, T. M. (2015). Methods for communicating the complexity and uncertainty of oil spill response actions and tradeoffs. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 21(3), 631-645.
